


What is Real, Always Was, and Cannot be Destroyed

by littlehollyleaf



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Episode: s05e19 Hammer of the Gods, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-26
Updated: 2010-04-26
Packaged: 2018-09-15 15:14:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9241118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlehollyleaf/pseuds/littlehollyleaf
Summary: 5.19 coda. An angel and a goddess come together to mourn.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Other people write fix-its to cheer themselves up. I write depressing stuff to help me cry. Go figure. Title taken from the Bhagavad Gita: 'Fear not what is not real, never was and never will be. What is real, always was and cannot be destroyed.' Because I've butchered the bible enough since joining this fandom, it seemed only fair I should mangle other religious texts too.

**What is real, always was, and cannot be destroyed**

 

He'd known what to expect - known the second Gabriel's hold on him lifted, sudden and unexpected. But nothing could have prepared him for the sight of those wings - an archangel's wings - reduced to ashes.

The outline was old already, half blown away, but still magnificent. Reclaiming in death the glory Gabriel had rejected in life, had concealed beneath a common, lowly Trickster's form.

And yet...

Castiel still remembers how his brother had come for him those few short weeks ago. Nothing but a Trickster then with not a shimmer of grace to be seen, and yet he'd fought each angel face to face, sword to sword. He could have annihilated every one with a snap of his fingers, but he didn't, he defeated them honourably, and let the survivors go. No tricks.

Well, not until he'd turned to Castiel, eyes trailing over the bloody sigil on his chest and shook his head.

"Cas, Cas..." he'd muttered. "What have those crazy kids got you into now?"

"Nothing," Cas had gasped back. "I make my own choices."

Gabriel had waved a hand over the blood and loose threads coating Castiel's skin, taking in the younger angel's sprawled - defeated - position on the ground.

"And this is your choice?"

Castiel had said nothing. Too hurt and weary to explain that if Dean Winchester had chosen surrender he didn't see why he should keep fighting either.

Gabriel had raised his eyes skyward with a sigh, up to the Father they both knew wasn't there.

"Well no more free will for you, kiddo," he'd continued. "I want you to go to your room, and think about what you've done."

Snap.

The place had been similar to where the archangel had sent him before - some kind of boudoir, draped in lush, silken sheets, with a king-sized bed laid out in the centre. Fortunately, the array of amorous and scantily clad women he'd had to fight through last time were absent, and Gabriel had even spared enough power to patch Castiel up and set his clothes right again.

It had been... pleasant, actually. Peaceful. After the first few hours of cursing and screaming had drained his anger to a manageable level.

He'd spent much of the time after that despairing at the thought of Dean now being under Michael's control. But with no way to act on the thought, no wrathful family members to throw himself at the mercy of in the hope of ending it, he'd had to simply endure the feeling.

He'd wondered then if his confinement was intended as a new way for Gabriel to torture him, because the pain of the loss was incredible. He couldn't understand why demons bothered with fire and blades and physical hurt when this was so much worse...

But then - the feeling hadn't past, hadn't lessened, but at some point he'd become acutely aware that he was _still alive_. That somewhere out there Sam was too, and there was work to be done. Hopeless, most likely, because now Michael had a vessel there was nothing to stop him going after Lucifer there and then. But Castiel thought that maybe Michael would wait, would want Lucifer in _his_ true form as well before facing him. Which meant he and Sam still had a chance to stop the fight if they got to Satan first.

It was a speck of a chance, at best, but Castiel found he wanted to take it. Wanted to fight to the end for the side he'd chosen, no matter the cost.

So he'd started screaming again, _demanding_ release for reasons entirely separate to his original ones. And when Gabriel ignored him he'd tried another tact, calling his brother a coward, calling him pathetic, calling him unworthy. And if he'd called him 'Dean' a few times too, well, he was shouting so loud he figured the archangel wouldn't notice.

Then his prison dissolved - illusory walls and sheets dropping hard and fast around him like puppets losing their string.

Or their master.

It hadn't been hard to follow the trail of waning power after that.

And now -

Now Castiel regrets his taunts. Bitterly. Wishes he could take them back. It wouldn't take long, just a moment, one single moment, if only he had the power to go back for just one moment.

Because Lucifer's essence haunts this decrepit, pitiful place as sure as the bloody and broken forms in the darkened hallway, and while he'll never know now what the archangel intended by hiding him away, whether it was for honest or nefarious purpose, there is no doubt how Gabriel died. Or why.

He came here to face their brother. He came here to fight. There is no other explanation. Gabriel is... _was_ a master of deception - he could _easily_ have evaded Lucifer until the apocalypse was done with. But instead he came here and stood his ground, stood together with these other fallen divinities and fought and died beside them.

Castiel has felt much towards his family these last few years - emotions he never imagined himself capable of, least of all in connection to the brothers and sisters he has lived in harmony with for centuries. He has known fear and anger, pity and disgust, and yes, even hate.

But this is the first time he's known pride.

He is like a cup filled to the brim, overflowing with it, and he kneels down on impulse, the hem of his coat curling, skimming the archangel's bent knee and collecting the ash above it, so he can reach out and stroke a couple of fingertips down Gabriel's cheek. Wanting to touch, to connect to the older angel in a way he'd never managed when Gabriel was alive.

There's nothing of his brother left, of course. The skin is cold and dry and not even Gabriel's own - nothing but a borrowed shell that could never do him justice. Yet he had worn it well. Revelled in the physicality. And he must have been fond of it or why, when he had the power to take any form of his choosing, would he have kept returning to the same? No, it is... appropriate he should have died in such a guise, one personally crafted. He did not die a Messenger, or a puppet, or even a prodigal. He died himself.

It hurts to think he faced death alone though. Because Castiel knows something of that, the cold horror of encroaching oblivion. At least he'd had a Prophet close by to temper his passing.

And that Gabriel should lie here, an _archangel_ \- the _best_ of the archangels, Castiel thinks, truth be told - unheeded and with no one to mourn him. It wasn't right.

So he scans his mind for a suitable liturgy and mutters a few words in Enochian. They stick in his throat, so he tries Latin. The same result. He's just about to try something more human when a sound behind him makes him turn, a crackling, like burning embers.

"Who do you pray to, child?"

The woman is beautiful in every way. Castiel can see her true visage behind the earthly façade and it is breathtaking - ancient and powerful. Majestic. And yet, absurdly, his first thought is of how Dean would marvel at her human appearance. The long raven hair, flowing like satin over darkened skin; the loose, sleeveless top, ruby red, and the black skirt - tight, to emphasise her curves; the sharp-heeled shoes too, Dean likes those... Liked. Another loss.

Castiel knows he should feel afraid. If he thought he was outmatched by the angels before, he is nothing but an ant under the toe of this woman, this being. But her gaze does not threaten. In fact, as her eyes shift from the fallen form in the doorway - the one with the gaping hole in his chest, the one Castiel had ignored in the face of his brother's tableaux - to Gabriel, he thinks she seems sad.

So Castiel simply drops his head, staring unseeing at Gabriel's outstretched arm, and answers.

"My Father."

The click of her shoes echoes as she moves beside him, through the empty, crumbling halls. There's lost power in those too, Castiel realises. Illusions once intricate and artful broken into dust like Gabriel's had been. It had seemed a waste of power to Castiel before, creating something so unnecessary, like the moving pictures Dean was so fond of. But in the midst the surrounding devastation, he thinks now that _destroying_ such achievements is worse, that perhaps art - creation - has purpose enough in itself, gaining meaning simply by existing.

The woman stops at his side and kneels, ignoring the ash and grime coating her stockings. She takes Gabriel's frozen hand in her own for a moment and presses it, before carefully lifting and positioning the palm over the bloody wound in the archangel's heart. She seems to soften with the gesture, lips parting, eyes shining.

Then she leans away, back straight. Regal again.

Castiel can't help but stare. It's been so long since he was awed by anything he almost doesn't recognise the warm glow of it tightening his chest.

"He told us your father had abandoned you," she says without looking at him, gaze still focused on Gabriel.

The intensity is burning and Castiel finds himself unnerved. Is this what Dean meant when he talked about the intimidation of an angel's stare?

She turns to him then, impossibly calm, and Castiel looks away.

His silence is answer enough and the woman nods.

"Have you no mother to give you guidance?" she asks. The words are too sharp for concern, but they aren't wholly detached either. Curious, perhaps.

"Our god is father and mother both," Castiel answers, fixing on Gabriel's face. The expression is peaceful and for a second Castiel envies his brother that. "We had no need," he finishes.

 _Had_.

He can feel the woman look him over, thick lashes moving up and down.

He expects her to scoff, to ridicule - his kind and hers have ever been at odds, holding themselves above angels with the kind of arrogance... well, the kind of arrogance Castiel and his family had held themselves above _them_ , he supposes. All save Gabriel.

What he doesn't expect is for her to sigh, eyes closing briefly. When she opens them again it is to stare into the distance, gazing back centuries, millennia, further, perhaps, than even Castiel remembers.

"The world is so different," she breathes, her voice the purest, most desolate lament the angel has ever heard. "It's people so changed - their needs and worship with them..." She shakes her head, eyes falling to her clasped hands, rich golden bracelets fallen over the back of them. "To survive, our needs must change too." Her gaze returns to Gabriel. "He knew that. We should have listened."

It dawns on Castiel then that this woman _knew_ Gabriel, better than he did. Better than he ever _could_. His own brother. How had it come to this? That an outsider, a heathen, should know an archangel better than his kin?

"I should have..." he starts. "I..."

Everything knots together then, wrapping round Castiel like a vine of thorns - Gabriel's death, Dean Winchester's defeat, god's neglect, his own exile. Each of them pricks harder than the sharpest of blades and Castiel can't take it anymore.

He weeps.

He weeps for the Earth and its people, for Heaven and his family. He weeps for the brother he never knew, and for the brother he could have. And though she never sheds a tear, somehow he knows this woman, this goddess weeps with him. He doesn't ask why, her reasons are her own, just accepts the warm, tight embrace of her arms when she offers them, lets them envelop him over and over, a hand guiding his head to her shoulder where his tears fall until he is spent.

"I'm sorry..." he chokes as the wave subsides.

The woman draws him gently back, lifting his head with a touch to his chin.

He catches a flash of red from her nails as her other hand wipes the tear tracks from his cheeks.

"For mourning a death? Don't be sorry," she tells him, and the softness and the certainty almost make Castiel want to cry again because it's just what he's been looking for - a parent's comfort and reassurance. _More_ than he was hoping for, even, with the added warmth of a feminine touch. He thinks he understands now why Dean always spoke so reverently of his mother. "It is the way of things," she continues, dropping her hands. Just the two again. "Until we meet in the life to come, we mourn..." she turns back to Gabriel and slowly the tenderness and sorrow drops from her eyes and they grow hard and cold, enough that Castiel feels a chill shiver down his vessel's spine that cuts through to the very centre of his grace. "And we avenge," she finishes, rising to her feet in one fluid motion.

Castiel tilts his head back to look at her. She is beautiful still, but it is a fearful beauty now. Terrifying.

"You would do that?" he asks, and his voice sounds so very small. "You would avenge him, even though he is not of your kind?"

She looks down at him.

"He was," she says, voice low.

She lets the words sink in, holds Castiel fast for a long moment, before turning her back on him.

"Vengeance is the least I can give him."

He's not sure how he knows, but Castiel is aware this mother, this destroyer, is about to leave him and he cannot let her. He jumps up and grabs her arm.

"Take me with you," he demands.

She turns her head slowly and eyes the hand on her arm with distaste. Her gaze is dangerous when she lifts it to Castiel, but he takes in a breath to steel himself and holds it.

"Take care," she says, jerking her arm away. "That this is not your grief talking. Could you truly avenge your brother, if it meant the death of another?"

Castiel gazes back.

"Lucifer is no brother of mine," he says.

She regards him a moment longer and Castiel is aware he is being judged. He stands fast beneath the scrutiny and eventually she lifts her head with a dark and terrible smile.

"Then come." She holds out a hand. "And we will destroy him together."

Castiel doesn't hesitate, he rests his palm in hers and grips tight.  
  


***

He's not sure where he expects her to take him - somewhere exotic, perhaps, rich with coloured smoke, incense and blood. Somewhere dark and cruel and blasphemous.

He does not except a cheap, badly furnished hotel room, dirty clothes scattered about, with a tall man perched on one of the threadbare beds.

He is focused on an open laptop and frowning but jumps up when they appear, vapours of smoke wafting from the woman's shoulders, the dying fire of her flight scorching the carpet around them.

"Damn it, Kali, we told you not to do that!"

She ignores the protest and pushes Castiel forward. Sam's frustration turns to wide-eyed shock.

"You asked me to gather others who would help you. Here," she nods to Castiel. "He will fight for us."

"Oh my god, _Cas?_ "

The woman shows no interest in the recognition, but Castiel starts a smile. Of course this deity would have found Sam Winchester already - he is at the centre of this battle, coveted by angels. It is no surprise other gods should also seek him out. No surprise that this goddess, this Kali, should turn to Sam for help with her vengeance.

But when another man steps through the bathroom door, interrupted with his shirt buttons half undone and a wash cloth in hand, sharp green eyes filling with relief as they meet Castiel's and stay there, the angel's smile drops. There's a spike of fear, followed by wonder, because he is just a man - flawed, limited and glorious.

"Dean."

 

~ **fin** ~


End file.
